Kshitij Volume 9 Issue 1 Kriti

8/2/2019 Kshitij Volume 9 Issue 1 Kriti

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While some described him as shy & silent,others spoke of arrogance. Such a t roubledteenager he was. Some even cited that the boy

was in love and thus a bit lost within. Perceptionat its best.But no one could perceive the sadness thatspoke through his eyes. If only someone had thecourage to look through. But all they could dowas talk. On the other hand, the boy was ratheramazed at how everyone failed to understand

him. A world filled with fear. Or else they wouldhave known

Maybe it wasn't for them to breach the walls ofremoteness and remorse built around him. Andyet he called them ignorant. T he memories ofthe lonely childhood sometimes brought a sly

smile to his face: the first signs of madness. Asclocks t icked by, the slackness crept in, as slowas a serpent. But didn't anyone notice the blacktear trails, on his freckled cheeks? Maybe theywere too busy working, because, after all,machines didn't have blood-pumping organs.Or the black shadow that followed them seeking

acceptance, but did it even matter? It was a justa ghost , too many to care for. The boy had takenup to his solitude and misery. Empathy was

nothing more.

The frequent memory of the childhood, clear

as quartz. The cause. The memory of theblazing curtains and the smoldering plasticskins of the toy dolls. The toys which oncebeeped and walked. The memory of thetoddler, running on the marshy grass. The teardroplets fresh on the pudgy cheeks. Bombedruins, strewn with Kalashnikovs and Molotovs.

The smoke billowing through the burningneighborhoods. Crying infants and theirwailing mothers. The deafening sound ofbullets, roaring through the night sky. Thediabolical laughter. The sadness. Somethingsimilar to the black massacre dripping out ofthe eyes or rather more like the poignant

feeling, which fills you, as someone is slowlychoked to death, in front of you. Uncanny itwas. Only if they knew, it wasn't the war, butthe mind lost to it. And how could it notreflect?

But strangely enough the walls of anguish and

despondency had started to cave in. The firstsymptoms were of the delirious talks. Themadness worked inwards. The laughter that

VI SIONS OF A DERANGED MIND

Gagandeep Gill

VI SIONS OF A DERANGED MIND


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Illbeth

ere...


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MM e,r o

et

bhe

m

r

emeRI had just finished pouring out

the soup when I heard the loud thudof the circular table falling, accompanied by

the clinging of the cutlery. I rushed to the diningroom to make sure that she was alright. She was

just about to bump into a chair when I caught

her hand. My touch calmed her instantly; I thinkmy disappearance had frightened her. I put thetable back in order and guided her to her seat. Iwanted this to finish quickly, so I rushed backand got her soup.

For the last few years, my mother and I,

her only daughter, have been livinglike this. Five years back, whenshe was diagnosed withAlzheimer's disease, I wastold that she would soonforget all voluntaryactions. Back then, Ihadn't been able to

gauge the extent towhich that wouldchange both our lives.But now, as the disease

After I poured the final dregs of the soup intoher mouth, I began the long process of helpingher climb up the short, dimly-lit staircase to herroom. It was a painfully slow process becauseshe would keep forgetting the process ofraising one foot after the other. At t imes,

she would trip and fall and lift ing her upagain would become a nordeal in itself.Added tothat


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Sushobhan Sen

would sing to me as I fell asleep, joke about thesort of husband I would get and scold me forneglecting my chores. But now, her voice

reminded me of all that I had lost. I was a happywoman once; I taught at the local school andvisited my friends regularly. But ever since shehad been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, mywhole life revolved around taking care of her. Iwas forced to leave my job and take upsomething small at home. There was noquestion of visiting my friends because I could

not leave her alone. Even sneaking out to buyprovisions was a risk that I was forced to takewhen she was asleep in the early hours of theday.Marriage was something that I could nolonger dream about. When I was younger, Iused to have dreams about running a big,happy family with a loving husband. I supposeall girls have such dreams. But with this great

blow, all my dreams had evaporated. I hadnothing left anymore, just my ailing motherand a dark, empty future.

Once we reached her dusty old room, I helpedher onto her creaky bed. I had stoppedcleaning her room some time back because Ireally saw no point; there was no appreciation

coming anyway. I caught a glimpse of a portraitof my late father hanging on the wall andbegan to cry. His death in a car crash sevenyears backhad started off the horrible chain of

going. It killed me to have to do this and I onlywish that there was an easier way. But I had nochoice.

Once I was done, I sat down beside her. She wasstaring up at the roof, her face revealing noemotion at all. My mother was a strangeperson. She would seldom fight with anybody;many-a-times, we had to warn her that peoplecould take advantage of her if she did not showsome brevity. But today, she was fighting the

greatest battle of her life trying to protect herlast few memories of her daughter. She hadforgotten virtually everything, but she stillseemed to remember me. It was as though inher losing battle, I was the last castle that sherefused to flee from. But hers was a losingbattle and I knew that she was not strongenough to keep it going for long. I'm sure she

understood.

As she dozed off, I kissed her on her forehead. Icould sense warmth emanating from her body;the disease had destroyed her mind, but herheart was still alive for me. I knew she trustedme to do what was best for both of us.

After turning off the lights, I went backdownstairs to clear the table. I picked up thecutlery, the soup bowl and the newly-openedbott le of sleeping pills emptied into the soup


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fd r u h d : . kk fd r u sl an s' ki Fk esafcN t kr scu i j kx

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Spot Of BotherWaqar Sarguroh

Valence lived at n=5, l=0, m=0, s=+1/2 of anAg-atom. He had worked a long way to arrive at thisaddress-the outermost level on the silver atom. Nowhe was above his more helpless compatriots on inneraddresses struggling to keep pace. Valence had alwayswanted to be a free electron. He had heard a lot aboutbeing free from the nucleus' pull, how it was

liberating, how many seconds earlier, electrons beforehim had beaten all restricting probabilities to freethemselves. Valence himself was never one to followprobabilities. He always knew there would be enoughof those who sufficed with the average while hestrived for the far end of the curve. He was not going tofall to mediocrity now either. He was prepared to doanything required, switch between particle and wave

and tap on uncertainty to be at more than one place. Hejust had to take in that bundle of energy and unbindhimself. The right moment was only one step away,any picosecond now. This was all that was importantto him, all he would bother about- his big break.

Rajiv turned the silver ring over his finger afew times. It was unusually heavy and uncomfortablethat day. It felt like it would explode into splinters if he

did not keep moving it. His legs were heavy too; theyfelt like rocks as he planted them on the woodenstaircase one after the other. He was tired and hungryb t h k h ld t t f t i

would come running, unlock the door, turnaround and run back to his room. Rajiv preferred itthat way. He was disappointed when he heard hiswife's slow footsteps in those annoying rubberslippers that slapped the floor with each step.

Shilpa opened the door and as soon as she didthat, she asked, So? How was your day today?

Every day when Rajiv returned home Shilpa had aquestion for him that Rajiv could not answer. Rajivalso supposed that she did so- under the mask of herforced smile and welcoming calm manner- just to puthim in that situation. It would have been different ayear back. He had lost his job at an IT firm as asoftware engineer after the company collapsed underrecession. Now a year later, Rajiv was struggling to

find a job that paid him enough. He had borrowed alot of money from his friends so that he could manageto pay for Ram's school, the house rent and also attimes basic provisions. So he just could not answerquestions like 'Any luck?', 'How was your day?','How's it going?' especially when they came with hiswife's smile. As he walked towards the couch, he triedto stitch words together, I went for this interview I

told you about, they'll let me know in a week. Rajivtried to avoid speaking to his wife while facing her, hewould rather face a packed courtroom; at least thereh ld h t t 'I h d m l k' Wh


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'Hmm' that was somewhere between disregardand agreement. He was amazed how, even as he wasjobless and running in debts, all his wife could botherabout was this stupid monkey; either that or charactersfrom TV soaps that she watched all day. That was all

she was bothered about. Her worries and life had beenreduced to such irrelevance.

Rajiv walked into his son's room. Ram was infront of his own TV set playing a video game. Rajivasked him, How long have you been sitting here,Ram? Ram, still engrossed, replied, Not too longDaddy. I just can't clear this level of Mario. I keepgetting stuck at this wall, there must be something.

Rajiv couldn't help but smile. His son had his ownirrelevant worries too. But Rajiv couldn't blame him.In fact he'd let Ram have those than share his own, sohe let him continue.

Mario was worried. He had a lot on his mind.Mushroom Kingdom was going to be taken by theturtles unless Bowser was defeated and Princess

Peach rescued. It was all peaceful and merry beforePrincess Peach was kidnapped. Mario and his brother

Luigi were celebrating Princess Peach'sbirthday at her castle when Bowser, the head of theturtle race, kidnapped her. Luigi had disappeared in arift on Level 3 and now Mario was stuck on Level 4.He couldn't jump high enough to get across a wall and

there was a long way to travel beyond it too. ButMario was determined; he kept persisting and wouldrestart the level each time he had to. He had to getthrough to the last stage- this was all that wasimportant to him.

A few trillion years later all that is left is a tinyblack hole of zero size. Valence and other un-ionisedelectrons, Rajiv with his wife and son and their TV

sets and millions of other humans like them, thecommon cold, the president of the USA with the FirstLady and their First Dog, Mario, Luigi, PrincessPeach and her birthday cake, the monkey on the newschannel and his doctors and other less fortunatecreatures, Martians and other aliens, Saturn with itsrings, the Sun and other large stars and planets and all

else with all their worries have been reduced to thesame infinitesimal spot - an insignificant spot ofbother.


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Cockroach, or the Blattaria, belongsto the insecta class, of the arthropoda

phylum in the animilia kingdom.

Cockroach, a common household food-consuming pest, is an extremely vile andresilient organism, characterized by its

disagreeable odour and obnoxious bodystructure-

BLAH! Blast these wretched ignorantcreatures. If only I could get my legs on theinsolent fool who wrote thisthing.

Now, now Marty,

don't go offlosing yourcool overs o m ed a f twordso f ad i m -

wi t te

H ecouldn't blame Marty for

being so intolerant. After all, human beingswere a nave race of creatures. With theirundeveloped minds, their conception of theworld was restricted by the limited amount oftime they had spent in the middle, on planetearth. Having evolved a mere million yearsago, and given the inadequate intellectualcapacity they were gifted with, it was nothumanly possible for them to comprehend the

infinite complexity of nature...neither werethey expected to. After all, the laws of nature,with all the obscurity and intricacy of theirdesign, could appear rather complicated to

the lesser minds. You could end up spendingmonths and years together

figuring it out and yet be asclueless as ever.

Fortunately, we,cockroaches were

a g i f ted lo t .Blessed withample brains,cockroachesh a di n h a b i t e dthe ea r ths i n c ev i r t u a l l yf B i

Aditya Garg


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endangering theharmony of the otherwise perfectworld intricately strung together by our

ancestors. But then ofcourse, there wasnothing a big old meteorite couldn't handle.

It was the great grand meteorite of 65 millionB.C. (as per the human date) which trulyestablished our identity as the ultimatesurvivors on planet earth. The meteorite, whichwas no big surprise, considering theastronomical intelligence of our race, proved to

be a blessing in disguise. All the lesser lifeforms, lacking the survival instinct of acockroach, were completely eradicated fromthe face of the earth, cleansing the planet of allthe unwanted filth, and paving the way for anuninterrupted and glorious reign under thecockroaches.

But who knew, nature was but with a sense ofirony. Just when everything seemed perfectand the world finally looked to be headed onthe right course, human beings took birth.Throughout the course of our vast lifetime,spanning millions of years, never ever had weencountered a species more haughty andimprudent as the humans. From the moment

human beings set foot on earth, they workedincessantly towards devising the best possibleway to devastate the planet, devouring it of allitsresourcesandmaking it uninhabitable forall

I

w i s h i thappens soon now, I can'tstand any of these two-leggedmorons any longer. Marty grumbled,bringing Bugger out of his trance, as theycrossed the housekeepers on their way out.

It won't be long now, Marty, it's inevitable.These humans have brought it upon

themselves.HA-HA, I can't wait to see the earth finally

gett ing rid of these despicable pests. They arelike a disease, a virus. All they do is multiply,and multiply until they have depleted everydamn resource in the area. I wish you couldhear me right now. You have plagued ourplanet for too long now, it 's about time you gotwhat you deserve. It's been a million years, amillion years of utter blasphemy anddevastation. For a million years, all you havebeen is a burden on this planet, a burden on us.For a million years, we have been toleratingyou, fixing up all the mess you have created,putting up with everything you have thrown

against us. Now, it is time. It is time you facedthe consequences. It's time you got it back inyour face. ARE YOU LISTENING? TIME YOU GOTIT IN YOUR FACE, IN YOUR FA-


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The L ast R efuge

glazed fene strations on a ll four sides, g iving abeautiful view of the city and the structurestha t de fined its very charac ter, a rchitec tura llyand otherwise. It was an aestheticallydesigned space. Or rather one that used tobe.A couch lay on one corner and a solitary

d ra fting tab le stoo d ac ross the room , next tothe large window s on the ea stern side o f thebuilding.The same wretched d rea m a ga in, one w hichhas haunted me ove r the last many years. Ad isea se tha t ha s c lung on to my subconsc ious,pushing me ever so slowly but surely towardsinsanityOnly because it took me right till the ve ry end ,to the threshold o f the very roo t c ause o f mymisery, to have it taken away ever socruellyIf only I could see my design, mybuilding - one tha t is to b e a true monument toman's indomitable spirit and unboundimagination, material ise completelyIf

onlyHe stag ge red towards the table, p lac ing b othhis hands on its ed ges and sta red long a t thedrawings stuck on to the drafting board as

Yes! I can see it now..Steel columns sprung out from the surface a s

they linked with eac h other to form an intrica teframework of beams and trusses, rising high inthe a ir, tall and slender. The d elica te steelskeleton dwarfed all that surrounded it as skyand earth amalgamated into one by the

unfathomable darkness that seemed tosuspend the structure in mid -air.Very innovative, a column frame structure asop posed to load-bearing walls. Yes, yes, just a sthe Wainworth building thinner walls, largerwindows and the tallest building yet - a skysc raper , one may c a ll it. Brilliant!The b uild ing sta rted taking form as it wasenveloped in brick masonry and plaster.Vertic a l ribbons of m asonry rose unimp ed ed ,s t a r t i n g f r o m t h e g r o u n d . C o r n i c e sma terialized a t the roo f level, ornam ented byvines that crawled ever so subtly around itsc orners. Window s and arches found .Almost the re no w! The p erfec t high-rise! One to

rise above all, both in architectural prowessand height..Beams of bright light cut across the almostcomplete structure dissipating all in its wake

The Last Refuge

Reuben Thomas John


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The sub tle inte rp lay of spaces and form, howart and c rea tivity confluenc es with function, orra ther what the layman re fers to as

architec ture, wa s the b urning passion tha t haddriven him until now- a passion that he wasdetermined to c ling on to until the end .Tod ay might just b e d ifferent I can.. I can fee lit..He p icked up the rotor pen, unsc rewed its capand plac ed it c a refully beside the tab le. As he

bent dow n over the drawing sheet he c aughta glimpse of the Wainworth building throughthe window next to his drafting table.Mesmerised, almost as if in a stupor, he stoodthere motionless, staring at the form, his weteyes betraying his love and longing for theconstruc tion that he g azed upon. The more hestared upon, the less inclined he became to

resume work on his unfinished p rojec t.Courage drained him as insecurity andinadeq uacy c rep t in. The p en sta rted shakingas his fingers trembled. His incapacityinfuria ted him a nd he flung his pen a t the w all,furious with himself.What if my design c annot surpass tha t o f the

Wainworth build ing. Not b e a ble to match itspure b eauty and shear mag nificence tha tseemed to radiate off it, nor the brilliant U-shap ed plan stacked upon a rec tang ular solid

be a p itiful wa ste o f space, an insult to m y ownego and ca pa bility.What if I sta rt now and no t rea ch the goa l I've

set for myself. The p a in and anguish would bea ll too terrib le then. Indeed a hea vy burden itwa s to b ea r, knowing tha t a build ing o f suchmagn i f i cence ex i s ted and m igh t beunsurpassab le a rchitec turally.Depressed, James threw himself onto thecouch, c iga rette in hand and picked up wha t

remained of the wine and started takingdeep swigs of the liquor. He could soon feelthe nicotine and alcohol kicking in, throwinghim into a d runken stupor that hemostly remained in for the better part of theday.A little pea c e now.The wine bott le d rop ped from his hand , on to

the floor, spilling what little remained of theliquor. Sha rds of g lass flew ac ross the floor,and lay there, glimmering in the sunlight, thebrittle g lass ever so bea utiful, bet raying futilityand despa ir in its b roken self.A life shattered b y ego a nd amb ition...

Mo

JamesMuller,ren

architect di


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& d fu d x qIr k, x kSj o x ksLokeh


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Team Kshit ij


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Kshitij Volume 9 Issue 1 Kriti

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